My Daughter, My Mother (27 page)

Sooky had only once met
Mama-ji
Nirmal, when he came on his only visit to the UK in the early Seventies, when they were living in the first Handsworth house. She remembered a slender, haggard-looking man whose face would light up in radiant smiles. He was full of laughter and jokes. And she had heard his warm, teasing voice on the telephone many times from Delhi. He always booked a call to them around the time of
Vaisakhi
, the new year, and
Diwali
. But Nirmal was not enchanted by England.

‘I don’t know how you managed to make the switch,
beteh
,’ he said to Meena. He belonged in India.

Soon after his visit, he and Bhoji moved the family to a new settlement in Delhi, called Trilokpuri, east of the river.

‘One day, we will all visit,’ Meena would say. ‘Now the business is doing so well.’

While she was talking about these things Sooky understood that she was happy, remembering all that had been lost, in the Garden of Eden before Partition.

But it seemed so much more difficult to ask about what had happened after that. Sooky understood that her mother’s feelings were torn by conflict. But she didn’t understand fully what the root of this conflict was, or why her response to things was often so confusing.

Thirty-Two

One afternoon Meena started talking, across a table strewn with vegetables and tomatoes and half-chopped onions.

She was moving back and forth across the kitchen, between stirring lamb in a pan and finishing mixing flour and water for
roti
. Sooky was sitting on one side of the table dealing with the onions and garlic, her eyes and nose running. Harpreet, opposite her, was running her hands through a pan of
dal
to check for bad bits and stones. On a chair by the sink Priya stood floating toys in a bowl of water and chattering.

Sooky and Harpreet had been talking about the episode of
Brookside
they had watched last night, and then a silence fell into which Meena, hands in the dough beside them, abruptly announced, ‘What I have never told you is that the night we came away from our village, travelling in the darkness, my mother was taken away. It was more than three years before we saw her face again.’

After delivering this bombshell, Meena picked up the blue plastic bowl of dough, set it on the side with a tea-towel draped over it and went to the sink to wash the sticky remnants of it from her hands.

Sooky and Harpreet both froze, Harpreet with her right hand buried in the pan of
dal
. Sooky badly needed to blow her nose, but sat absolutely still. Their eyes were wide with shock. Was there going to be more? Should they ask any of the questions that herded into their minds like panicked cattle?
When was this exactly? What do you mean ‘taken away’? Is that why we’ve never heard much about her? More than three years – what do you mean?

Meena stirred the pan of simmering lamb. Its spicy, delicious smell became entangled with the silence, which grew longer, seething with emotion. Sooky watched her mother, her apron straps crossed over at the back of her primrose-yellow
kameez
and tied round at the front as she was so thin. Her elbow, moving the wooden spoon, looked sharp and frail. Sooky thought about how different, how strange, her mother’s life seemed. For a moment an image of her came to mind: a bony scrap of a girl, running at the edge of a Punjabi wheat field, happy, innocent, with no thought that this would not always be her home. It brought tears to her eyes.

It was a struggle to realize that her mother needed help and that she herself had to find a way of giving it.

‘Mom?’ She got up with a glance at Harpreet, whose face was a study in dismay. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea. Why don’t you come and sit down?’

‘But there is food to prepare . . .’ Meena half-turned.

‘We can do the vegetables and
dal
together. Come on,
Ma-ji
.’

Seeing them all settling at the table, Priya wanted to be included, and she climbed down from the sink. While Sooky heated a pan of tea, Harpreet went to the bowl and scooped out a handful of dough. She sat Priya on her lap and started to teach her how to make
roti
.

Sooky brought mugs of tea to the table, sweet and frothy, and sat down between her mother and sister and daughter.

‘Tell us – will you, Mom?’

Meena took the pan of dry
dal
from Harpreet. She sat running the little green pulses through her fingers in the way they had seen her do countless times before, avoiding looking at the girls.

‘At first we were in Amritsar,’ she began. ‘We left our village quite early – in the March or April – and were able to catch a train and survive the journey. People say how lucky we were. Later on, round the time of Partition – in August – thousands left their homes, never to see them again. Very many walked in the
kafilas
from each side of the border, long snakes of people, carrying everything they could.

‘We Sikhs and Hindus were travelling east, while the Muslims were passing the other way, west out of India. It was very dangerous: everyone was afraid. There were many killings on both sides; people seeing those going the other way, knowing that they would take the homes they had just left: the farms, even the animals. Trains arrived each side of the border – in Amritsar, in Lahore – on which there was hardly a soul still left alive. The corridors and
bogies
ran with blood. Many stayed in camps near the border; they had nowhere to go . . .’

Meena talked fluently, matter-of-factly, gesturing with her free hand as if, all these years, she had been waiting just to say it all. Priya seemed aware that something special was happening and sat quietly, squeezing dough with her fingers and looking solemnly round at them all.

‘My father had a friend in Amritsar and somehow we found a place to live: in the Muslim quarter, where many people had left.
Mama-ji
Nirmal wanted to go to Delhi – he had the idea that he could make a good living. He loved cars and wanted to go into business, but for the time being my father said no, Amritsar was nearer to home and we would stay there. My uncle,
Thaya
Gurbir, was a cripple, so he could only do certain kinds of work and they had to find him something. But he was lazy. Only some days he went out, dragging his leg. He preferred just to sit. I stayed with my
Thayi-ji
Amarpreet.

‘My mother had been taken away. That night when we left, she went out into the field to relieve herself and was abducted by men whom we never saw. Many mothers, sisters, daughters were taken away by the Mussalmen, wanting to rape them, to make them convert to their religion. She went into the darkness. We didn’t see her after that. I was my mother’s oldest child, born when she was nearly fourteen years old. I had a sister, Parveen, who was two at that time. My mother carried Parveen with her in her arms and I never saw her again. Even later, when my mother came back, I never once saw my sister.’

Sooky glanced at Harpreet, who was holding on tight to Priya. Her face wore the same appalled expression that Sooky knew was on her own.

‘We were in Amritsar for only a short time – maybe three months – and then the bazaar nearby where we were living was set alight. All the houses were burning. It was dark; night-time. My father was not there – I don’t know why. I think he had gone to see someone about some work and was late back.
Thayi-ji
Amarpreet had just given birth to her baby son a few weeks ago, and she and Gurbir were asleep upstairs and so was I. There was one room up, one down. Nirmal came in, shouting, shouting at everyone to get out – he picked me up and carried me into the street. Everywhere was full of smoke, of the sound of screaming, everything burning . . .

‘My grandparents,
Dhada-ji
and
Dhadi-ji
, slept downstairs; they were able to move outside, and I stood holding my grandmother’s hand. There was nothing we could do. The flames were crackling and devouring. We felt their terrible heat on our faces . . . Nirmal went to rouse the others, but they were slow and, as he went back to the house, the roof collapsed.’ She motioned with her hand. ‘Everything fell. He could not go inside. Nothing was left.’

‘What about your uncle and aunt – and the baby?’ Harpreet broke in.

‘All died.’ Meena paused for a minute. Still without meeting their eyes, she slowly shook her head. Again Sooky and Harpreet looked at each other, out of their depth.

‘In Delhi things were better. My father found work in a flour mill, a Sikh business, and after a time Nirmal got a job as a taxi driver.’ Meena smiled. ‘This was his dream. They were able to keep us and buy food for us. We found a humble place to live. I stayed with
Dhadi-ji
in the daytime – there was no one else. Eventually I started to go to school.’

Pushing the chair back suddenly, she took the
dal
to the sink to wash it, wringing the stuff in her hands to shift the dust. She added them to the fried onions and spices, filled the pan with water and set it on the gas. Wiping her hands on her apron, she came back to the table. They all suddenly remembered to drink their cooling tea, stirring away the skin that had formed on top.

‘I was missing my mother and sister. I was sad and lost, in a strange place. Only
Mama-ji
Nirmal was my comfort – and
Dhadi-ji
. I began to understand that my mother was not the only woman who had disappeared at that time. People were talking, and I would hear. But I didn’t know even then that there were so many. Volunteers from each side crossed the border to look for them, these abducted women. They would go from village to village, questioning, listening to rumour and gossip, following talk of any small sighting. There were some exchanges of such women between India and Pakistan. Your abducted wives and sisters for our abducted ones . . . My father asked them to find her. Over and over he said her name: Jasleen, Jasleen, as if it could make her appear, like snapping his fingers. It took such a very long time, but he never gave up. He was very lonely. I do not know if he despaired. Always he seemed to have hope – he never asked them to stop looking.’

Sooky listened, an ache filling her body. Harpreet wiped her eyes, trying not to show Priya that she was crying.

Meena picked up a knife and began slicing off the stalks at the end of the pieces of okra.

‘Then, one day, they brought her back. Some men came. My father wept when he saw her, walking between them, being held by her arms. She was wearing turquoise clothing when she came to our door, I shall always remember it.’ Meena paused in her work, but still didn’t look up. ‘When I saw her face I could hardly remember it. My grandmother had died by then and I was left with
Dhada-ji
, who was an old man. I was eight years old, and for half my life I had not seen my mother.’

What did she say?
Sooky was bursting to ask.
What was she like?
But she didn’t want to interrupt.

But Harpreet, who was openly weeping now, cried, ‘Oh, that’s amazing – all that time! She must have been so happy to be back!’

Meena moved her head in a harsh way that contradicted this.

‘No, she was not glad. She was a stranger to us, and we to her. Later, when at last she started to speak, we found out that she had given birth to two children in Pakistan. She was already carrying a child when she was taken away, and had since given birth to another – both boys. Those two boys and Parveen, my sister, she had had to leave behind in Pakistan, with their family. The only family they knew. We had become dead to her in that time – and then they came to force her to go back.’

The full impact of the situation began to sink in.

‘But . . .’ Harpreet protested. ‘Didn’t anyone ask her whether she
wanted
to go back?’

Meena directed a look of scorn at her.

‘She was the property of her husband. Why would anyone ask her? No one asks a woman anything. And anyway, there were agreements – legal arrangements for exchanging such women. She came back to my father, but she was in a foreign country now, a city where she had never been before. She had no choice but to get used to it. My father was a good man and he loved my mother. He wanted her back with his heart – not just because she was his. But she had no feeling for him. I think she had given her heart to another. And she had left her children . . . She had lost not once, but twice. Her own heart was broken right down the middle.’

‘What about you?’ Sooky said. ‘You were her daughter too.’

Meena raised her head and spoke, looking past Sooky, across the kitchen. Her eyes went dull, her voice very flat.

‘I suppose she remembered me. Of course she must have done. But I was not the baby of her heart any more – she had lost her two boys. It took her a long time. She was not cruel, not hitting or shouting. Something worse. She was just . . .’ Meena looked down then, fighting her own emotions.

‘She never spoke – not for a long time: a year, perhaps more. She was there, but not there. My poor father . . . But then her belly grew big with another baby and she began to speak at last.’

She looked up again and took up her vegetable knife.

‘Until that time though, she said nothing. There was only silence and suffering.’

Thirty-Three

Meena laid her paring knife down then, covered her face with her hands and began to weep. Sooky and Harpreet, seeing her heaving shoulders and hearing the long-withheld, heartbroken sounds, went and stood each side of her, their arms round her shoulders. They were both crying as well. And Priya, catching all the grief in the room, clung to Sooky and soaked her leg with tears.

When they were all calmer, Sooky fetched the box of tissues from the other side of the kitchen and handed Meena some.

‘Oh, Mom,’ she said. ‘It’s all
so
sad.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us anything before?’ Harpreet asked, tears still running down her cheeks.